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Native mobile applications are popular among consumers, but how do their advantages translate to the business world? Not as well as you might think.
If you’re considering mobile apps for your business, here’s a new white paper that you’ll want to read. It explores each mobile app option, and explains why businesses should think twice before taking the native approach. You can access the white paper right here.
In 2012, Gartner estimates that smartphone and tablet sales reached 821 million, accounting for approximately 70% of all devices sold in the last year. In 2013, they expect those sales numbers to reach 1.2 billion.
If it feels like the mobile trend is growing faster than other trends in recent history, you’re right. According to a report published by MIT, mobile computers (smartphones/tablets) are on track to saturate markets in the U.S. and the developing worlds in record time. In other words, smartphones and tablets are spreading faster than any other technology in history.
How are businesses responding? A 2012 Accenture survey found that 78% of CIOs consider mobility a “top 5 priority”. Businesses understand the importance of mobile, and are rushing to take advantage of this trend.
That’s where the problems arise. As businesses rush to build mobile apps, they often dive into the project without proper planning, or without an adequate understanding of their mobile app options.
As you might imagine, this causes problems. First, it produces mobile apps that the company doesn’t really need. Second, without proper guidance, some companies build the wrong type of mobile app–wasting time and money in the process.
To help your company avoid these problems, I’ve created a list of questions you should ask before building a mobile app. Hopefully, these questions will keep you from building an app that fails, or from building the wrong type of mobile app. Before you build your mobile app, here are 4 questions to answer: …
4 essential questions to ask before building a mobile business app (Part 1)Read More »
If your company operates in multiple countries and currently translates your web sites and/or apps into multiple languages, let me ask you a question: What if you could combine the speed of machine translation with the accuracy of human translation?
If that sounds intriguing, here’s a video you’ll want to watch. It outlines the growing need for translation, and explains a unique translation method that nearly automates web application translation. I hope you find it informative.
Here’s a great new feature that will improve your web apps. With the latest m-Power enhancement, developers can now automatically include a custom, drop-down navigation menu in every application.
Here are a few reasons you’ll love this new feature:
1. Maintenance is simple: The m-Power navigation menu is built for simplicity. Once you create your navigation menu file and tell m-Power to include it in your applications, you’re home free. Because the navigation menu is a separate file, maintenance is a breeze. You only have to change one file to update your navigation menu across all applications.
2. User-based security: When you apply the same navigation menu across all apps, you run into user-access problems. What happens if certain applications should only be accessible by a select number of users? Don’t worry, we thought of that. You can set up user-based security on the menu, so users can only see the menu items that pertain to them.
3. We’ve already done the hard work for you: We’ve already created the CSS and HTML necessary for the drop-down menu (though you can alter it if you want). There’s nothing for you to do except tell m-Power that you want the menu added to your applications.
Want to add the navigation menu to your m-Power applications? It’s simple. We’ve written up a short tutorial in our techblog that explains the whole process. You can find it right here.
When you look back at 2012, what stands out in your mind? As an IT professional, what are you going to remember the most about the past year? As I think back on 2012, several stories and events really stand out as shaping the year (and possibly beyond) from a business technology perspective.
While there are too many stories to list, I looked back over the past year and pulled out the news, stories, and events that were of significant importance to IT pros and developers in 2012. Feel free to add anything I missed in the comments, but here’s my list of the top IT stories of 2012: …
Top 8 tech stories of 2012 for IT pros and developersRead More »
Big news this week: The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that the specifications for HTML5 are finally complete! While it doesn’t technically become the standard until 2014, all of the HTML5 features are finalized.
Let me quickly explain HTML5 for those unclear on the topic. HTML5 is the next iteration of HTML, the markup language used for structuring web pages. While it does bring some new features, HTML5 is simply an improved version of the HTML standard that we already know and love.
HTML5 brings a bunch of new features, like offline storage, native audio and video, improved semantic markup, and more. If you’d like to learn more about HTML5, here’s a great resource for you. We’ve also written up some tutorials over on the techblog.
While we’ve already added some HTML5 features into m-Power (and plan on adding more), I’d like to get your thoughts. What HTML5 features and capabilities would you like to see added to m-Power in the next year? Which new features would most improve your web (or mobile web) applications?
I’d really love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section on this post.
How would you describe your IT department? Are they innovators, laggards, or somewhere in between? In case you’re unfamiliar with those terms, they come from the technology adoption lifecycle concept–a sociological model developed in the 50’s that describes the adoption or acceptance to new products or innovations.
While that concept is generally applied to consumers, I believe it just as easily applies to IT departments.
Every major technological shift comes with varying levels of acceptance among IT departments. Some drive new trends (innovators). Some welcome new trends with open arms (early adopters). Others sit back and wait to see what everyone else is going to do (majority). Still others are reluctant to change, with some even actively fighting it (laggards).
That being said, some trends are out of your control. These trends are driven by consumers. It doesn’t matter which category your IT department falls under–you must adapt. In fact, you could refer to these as more than just trends. They’re realities. In other words, they’re not up for debate. You can’t sit back and wait to see what others will do. You can’t refuse to change.
What are these realities? While I’m sure there are more, I’ve put together a short list of 3 realities that your IT department must learn to accept: …
The world of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing some pretty fascinating changes. Whether or not you buy into the “Big Data” hype, you can’t deny the fact that we’re generating crazy amounts of data–more so than ever before.
What are we doing with all of this data? Or, more specifically, do we fully understand the potential? I’m not so sure that many companies know the answer to those questions.
While these changes create many questions, here’s one thing you can count on: Data analytics is changing, and will play an increasingly important role in the business world. When you combine this deluge of data with recent tech trends, we get a few very important changes to the world of Business Intelligence. What are they? Here are 5 key ways that BI will change in the near future: …
Here’s a piece of good news for all mobile web app developers: Starting in iOS 6 (which was released earlier this year), the default iOS browser now supports file uploading!
Why is this so important? Let me take a step back and explain.
As you may (or may not) know, mobile web apps support file uploading. There’s still quite a bit of confusion surrounding this topic, and the topic of mobile web app features in general. Many people don’t realize that mobile web apps offer nearly every feature found in native apps, like GPS access, gyroscope/accelerometer access, file uploading, and more. …
Think back just 10 years ago. Smartphones and tablets (as we know them today) didn’t even exist yet. Social media was a new concept. Mentioning the term “Big Data” would just bring you awkward stares.
My, how the times have changed.
Fast forward to today. Businesses are currently experiencing some of the most rapid technological changes since the rise of the web. Smartphone and tablet adoption have exploded. PC usage is on the decline. Cloud computing is on the rise.
With all of these changes, which areas should your IT department focus on in the next few years?
I’m curious to hear your opinions. What do you think are the biggest strategic issues facing IT departments going into next year? While I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, I’ve created my own list of 6 issues that every IT strategy must include going into 2013: …